a force my former communication has shown you in part. The process still goes on. The results I have given above.

No longer left to rely on my own judgment, I am glad to be thus relived of responsibility in regard tot his Indian country. Colonel Watie thinks there are 6,000 or 7,000 Federal troops in Kansas and on the neutral land, and that, as soon as Colonel Doubleday returns from Washington, they will again invade the Cherokee country. I have never doubted that during the season an invasion in force would take place. If it does, it will be for the purpose of occupying the country, if not of invading Texas also. The force will certainly be between 10,000 and 20,000 men. A small force could not advance any distance, or garrison and hold the country; and I know well enough that a large one would never return, leaving agents and garrisons behind, without first destroying my force or driving me out of the country. They know well enough I have been trying to fortify here. I would have prepared to meet them at the Canadian, if I could have got troops; but no more can be had from Texas until the enemy is close at their doors. Then they would come in swarms, but utterly useless in the open field. To be sure of them, I remained here, believing that, the works once erected, I could, with the Indians and what Texans I could raise of a sudden, repulse any force of the enemy that is likely to come here.

I have been very carefully and very effectually deprived of the means in men, arms, and ammunition of making head against any force, and am left with just enough to make it a matter of course that the odium of abandoning the country, when then necessity comes, shall be thrown on me. I shall take good care, in advance, that it is not. I shall hold on the country as long as I can. But we all know that the Indians, with few exceptions, will not meet an attack of infantry and artillery in the open field. They will harass and annoy them while advancing or retreating, or in an action, where they can find cover.

So long as we have even a small force here, in reach of additional troops in Texas, the enemy will estimate us as more than we are-at what uncertain number we can be, on an emergency, and not at what we actually are. They may well do so; because here 5,000 or 6,000 men would come to me in eight days after I called them, and I would know of the invasion two weeks before the enemy could reach me. When I am north of the Arkansas, they can be upon me before my messenger would reach Texas; not a thousand men would come to me at all, and those that did would be entirely too late. Red River must be my base of operations, for I must draw all my corn, flour, and bacon, and my ammunition, if I get any, from Texas. I can place no posts on my line of communication, because I have no troops to spare.

Now, I submit it to your serious consideration, whether to push into the open country north of the Arkansas a small force of mounted men, whose numbers the enemy will have counted in a week after they reached there, with eight pieces of artillery, feebly manned, and a scant supply of ammunition, will not be simply to court disaster and disgrace; and whether such a force, with no infantry and no troops on the right; left, or in the rear, within, perhaps, 200 miles to support them, 190 miles from its base of operations and source of supplies, its communications unguarded, and its flanks unprotected by natural or artificial obstacles or defenses, will not be wholly at the mercy of an enemy in any force, tempted to attack by our feebleness, and provoked to it by the continual incursions of little marauding bands, who go across the frontier, fire a few shots, and then run back to take refuge in the Indian country and draw the enemy after them? The loss of our artillery, and utter dispersion